The Maplewood Redevelopment, Part I: History and Planning

28082017

Being as large and complex as it is, it was hard to figure out a way to present the Maplewood project clearly and coherently. After some thinking, it seems the best combination of clarity and detail will be to split it into three sections. This section, Part I, will be an overview of the site history and project planning. Part II will examine and break down the site plan with all of its contributing structures. Part III will be the regular construction update, which will be bi-monthly just like all the others.

Let’s start with the background. Love it or not, Cornell University is one of the major defining organizations of the Ithaca area. It employs nearly 10,000 people and brings billions of dollars in investment into the Southern Tier, Tompkins County and Ithaca. That investment includes the students upon which the university was founded to educate.

With that in mind, being one of the top-ranked schools in the world means that, in the historical context of the university’s goals and plans, new housing is rarely a concern. Cornell will update housing in an effort to be more inclusive and to improve student well-being, but with labs, classrooms and faculty offices taking precedence, building new housing is rarely an objective. Only about 46% of undergrads live on campus, and just 350 of over 7,500 graduate and professional students.

By the mid-2010s, Cornell was faced with financial strains, student unhappiness and worsening town-gown relations, all related to the housing issue. As a result, the past couple years have become one of those rare times where housing makes it close to the top of Cornell’s list of priorities.

However, the overall site plan did evolve a fair amount, mostly in response to neighbor concerns raised through the review process. Many residents on or near Mitchell Road were uncomfortable with multi-story buildings near them, so these were pulled further back into the complex, and late in the process the remaining Mitchell Street multi-story buildings were replaced with very-traditional looking townhomes with a smaller scale and footprint. More traditional designs were also rolled out for the pair of townhouse strings closest to Worth Street, since neighbors noted they would be highly visible and wanted them to fit in. The building planned in the city’s side was also pulled inward into the parcel early on due to neighbor concerns – it became an open plaza and bus stop. The university was fairly responsive to most concerns, although the most adamant opposition didn’t want any multi-story units at all, and really preferred as few students and as few families as possible.

It’s also worth pointing out that the town of Ithaca, in which the majority of the property lies (the city deferred the major decision-making to the town), had a lot of leverage in the details. The town’s decades-old zoning code isn’t friendly to New Urbanism, so the property had to be declared a Planned Development Zone, a form of developer DIY zoning that the town would have to review and sign off on. Eventually, the town hopes to catch up and have form-based code that’s more amenable to New Urbanism. The town also asked for an Environmental Impact Statement, a very long but encompassing document that one could describe as a super-SEQR, reviewing all impacts and all mitigation measures in great detail. The several hundred pages of EIS docs are on the town website here, but a more modest summary is here. If you want the hundreds of pages of emailed comments and the responses from the project team, there are links in the article here.

Some details were easier to hammer out than others. The trade unions were insistent on union labor, which Cornell is pretty good about, having a select group of contractors it works with to ensure a union-backed construction workforce. Also, at the insistence of environmental groups, and as heat pumps have become more efficient and cost-effective, the project was switched from natural gas heat to electric heat pumps, with 100% of the electricity to come from renewables (mostly off-site solar arrays).

Rents for the project, which include utilities, wireless and pre-furnished units, are looking to range from $790-$1147 per bed per month, depending on the specific unit. Back of the envelope calculations suggest affordability at 30% rent and 10% utilities, for 40% of income. Cornell stipends currently range from $25,152-$28,998, which translates to $838-$967/month.

7 responses

28082017

CornellPhD(03:08:54) :

Thanks for this; it’s exciting to see this go forward. Can you say more about Ithaca East? I don’t think I’m familiar with that project.

FWIW I don’t think Ithaca’s size and isolation would be as big a problem for housing if local NIMBYs weren’t so averse to growing the population through housing approvals (incentivizing the services/benefits of a larger sized city) or allowing for improvements to in and out transportation (through highway expansion/improvement at least). Maybe it’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem, but given the number of commuters in and out of Ithaca and the number of startups who relocate elsewhere because of transport problems it seems like NIMBYism and conservatism about Ithaca’s size and character are preventing a lot more than that size and character itself.

The short story is that Ithaca East is on Cornell land that the university leased out for affordable housing in the early 1970s. That lease was timed to be concurrent with affordable housing rule from HUD, which was 40 years. In 2012, the developer/manager (first David Abbott, and since his passing in 2001 it’s run by his son Bruce) immediately moved the units upmarket after the lease expired, and now it’s mostly (70%) students. However, while he might be profiting from the upmarket move, he has to ask Cornell every June whether or not he gets the land for another year; if it’s a no, he has 24 months to vacate the tenants and the premises. Bruce has been on pins and needles ever since.

Last year, there was a drawing of a Maplewood-like addition (a couple multi-story buildings, townhouses, another community center, probably 300-400 beds in a new urbanist layout) that had been used for a promo image by accident. When I copied it and asked about it, the project team freaked out. They said it was a design exercise that was discussed, but formal plans for Ithaca East were never fleshed out, and the image was never meant for publication. I guess it was like a concept car that gives design direction, but management doesn’t green-light. Had it been published, hypothetical concept or not, it could have given the town grounds to suspect segmentation violations in the EIS. Since then, I have never heard another word about it.

[…] increases the housing supply and provides some relief to the ongoing housing affordability issues. The design team was responsive during the development process and the EIS review was thorough. The project will pay 100% of its property value in taxes. The project uses air-source heat pumps, […]